Monitoring with SSH Public Key Authentication

I am using Applications Manger build 8100 and was able to configure a Linux monitor with plain Password authentication over SSH, however when i was trying Public Key Authentication it was failing with an error message "Check whether the PasswordAuthentication is set as yes in /etc/ssh/sshd_config file.Kindly set it as yes and restart the SSH daemon", I verified the configuration file and PasswordAuthentication is set to Yes, i searched in the forms and found that in some there were references to uncomment the protocol line and set it to a value of 2, however i am not admin of the the system, and cannot request for this change to be made. I am able to connect the said server with the same private key using Putty and WinSCP, so i am pretty sure that i can connect to the server using SSH Public Key Authentication, Any suggestions?